Though many pundits speculated the cabal of high school students prosecutors said drove South Hadley teen Phoebe Prince to suicide in 2010 received “slaps on the wrists” this week, Hampshire County criminal defense lawyers said the punishments fit the crimes.

Five teens pleaded guilty to the misdemeanor charges, mostly criminal harassment, or admitted the equivalent this week and were sentenced to probation or agreed to deferred sentences in connection with Prince’s death. Prosecutors said the 15-year-old hanged herself after intense harassment over romantic relationships at South Hadley High School that year.

Prince, an Irish national who was new to the school, hanged herself one afternoon and a story of the cruel teen-age needling emerged. The tragedy polarized the community and propelled the Darwinian nature of high school into an international debate.

Former Hampshire County District Attorney Elizabeth D. Scheibel charged six teens with various charges including statutory rape against two boys and civil rights violations involving bodily injury against all but one of the defendants. The felony charges were dropped under plea deals and one defendant escaped prosecution altogether when the sole charge of statutory rape against him was dropped on Thursday, according to current Hampshire Country District Attorney David Sullivan.

At a crowded press conference at the Mullins Center in Amherst, Sullivan said his office crafted the plea deals with Prince’s family’s “compassion, mercy and understanding.”

David Hoose

“I think the outcome is a good one and a fair one and it’s a shame it took so long to get to this point,” Northampton lawyer David P. Hoose said during an interview. “We increasingly look to the criminal justice system to solve our problems.”

Attorney Harry Miles agreed the case came to an appropriate end.

“I think the case ended up where it ought to end up. The district attorney’s office showed good judgment,” he said.

Miles said he cannot say whether the original charges for the students were too harsh.

“With 20/20 hindsight it’s very easy to say you would have done things differently, but we do not know what motivated them to bring the charges in the first place. There are statements that could have been proven to be false or new information came to light that changed the case,” he said.

Miles noted that probation records can be sealed after five years gives the teens a second chance.

“You have to take into consideration what these kids’ parents have been through and how this has changed all of their lives,” he said.

Hoose said the case was a difficult one to handle at the beginning, given the social and international implications of it.

“As critical as I have been of Scheibel and her administration, I felt she was damned if she did and damned if she didn’t,” Hoose said.